The US will NEVER default on its debt unless it just "feels like it". US debt is in dollars and it can simply print dollars to pay off the debt. It likely wouldn't even cause inflation as then the country would have zero debt after the payoff and they would just be converting interest bearing instruments for non-interest bearing (Treasuries <-> dollars).

A country defaulting on debt is a problem only when their debt is in the currency of another country. Developing countries have debt in US dollars, for example. Eurozone countries (like Greece) have debt in Euros. Their debt is not in currency they control (Greece borrows from the ECB), that is why those countries can default on their debt.

The US debt is in dollars. It can't default on its debt unless the government "just feels like it".

The thing people don't seem to realize is that if the US defaults on its debts, the lenders get screwed. I mean really they're screwing themselves by lending to such an insolvent enterprise as the US government. All we need is to pull the trigger.

Bitcoin curently has an inflation rate almost double of the US dollar. When mining rewards go to zero for Bitcoin, one of two things will happen. Either transaction fees will go exponential because miners need to get paid or the mining reward will be put back. As users won't pay high transaction fees, the mining reward will be forced back or the system will fail. Bitcoin will have 3% inflation forever and the number of bitcoins will be unlimited (one line change to the source code to fix the block reward).

It is inevitable. If it isn't and you think that the number of bitcoins won't continue to increase forever, explain how transactions will be processed by miners when the reward is zero if transaction fees aren't 100X what they are today (or more).

The current block rewards at this current BTC price already doesn't support a lot of mining. Hence the 15% difficulty drop a couple days ago. Yet here we are... operating as normal. If 90% of the hashrate went offline, I don't suspect things would be all that different.

Dollars are always being created and destroyed; and they dont flow smoothly or equally to all markets. In particular, lots of dollars were created for stocks and real estate, and those markets will be the ones to feel dollar destruction the most acutely.

The dollar is still overall inflating. If you looks at the prices of everyday things you will see they are continuing the usual and customary slow creep upwards. This is necessary; even a tiny bit of deflation would rapidly decimate the entire dollar ecosystem; that is its inherent nature.

When you look at bitcoin, yes there is still some new minting going on via block rewards. The question is really how well does the market anticipate it. In a perfect information market, everyone would know exactly how much bitcoin remains to be created, and would thus price it in. I suspect that is not the reality, since peoples understanding and models of the flow of BTC are not perfect; so most likely some amount of block reward does represent real inflation. That said, its probably nothing compared to dollar inflation. Bitcoin is already strongly deflationary compared to the dollar, even despite the bear market trend.

We are approaching a crossroads where the Fed will need to decide how to act. The interest rate ramp up has caused asset markets to stumble; if they do not show signs of strength the fed may need to lower rates or possibly return to a new QE regime.

In summary; the best outcome for the Fed is if somehow we all gain so much productivity that we can overcome the market debt bubble it owes to itself, and keep the dollar machine running for another decade.

It is inevitable. If it isn't and you think that the number of bitcoins won't continue to increase forever, explain how transactions will be processed by miners when the reward is zero if transaction fees aren't 100X what they are today (or more).

They will be 100x what they are today, in fiat, because the value of bitcoin will also way higher. We will have a well functioning layer 2 to process >99% of the transactions. So it will work fine, miners get paid a little bit of bitcoin in transaction fees, but it will be a high fiat price to motivate them to mine. Most on chain transactions will be high value transactions, we will have a cheap layer two for everything else.

Why will this happen you ask?

If bitcoin is still around when the block-rewards end, it will have a lot of utility for mankind, it will be unique given its history, which means that people will continue to build on it, simply because there is money to make for the individual.

Its the beauty of bitcoin: It empowers the individual to act in his or her own interest instead of the group-interest. And becasue of all the individuals, it will have value for the group as a whole. All of us, holdlers, traders, devs, miners etc, we are all here for our self in the first place.

You seem to look at it like the rewards will stop today, but keep in mind that there will be a 130 year blockchain by then.

If bitcoin still works in 2140, it will be the most valuable thing mankind has ever build.

Actually, If it came to it, Bitcoin would still operate over radio or morse code, maybe even sms text messages on your phone or whatever we use by then. The fact is that it dosent require any specific network. So if the internet does die off bitcoin could still be used. Math concepts and good ideas are not easily erased.

I think the hashrate now is higher than it would be otherwise due to the speculative nature of bitcoin. The real question is what hashrate do we need, and what will future demand for block space look like. During the last bubble, fees were something like one quarter of the block reward. With higher overall adoption, surely there will be a stronger demand for base layer transactions, even if we have fully functional layer 2 or sidechains to offload much of the transaction volume. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a fixed (small) minting rate, similar to Grin.

Transactions can have much more economic activity than they do now. 100x larger fees is a problem for a single coffee purchase. It's not a problem when the same transaction can represent millions of coffee purchases.

I really don't care anymore. With bitcoin now their days are counted. And I'll be glad to wave goodbye forever to these bastards fooling the world's people. Bitcoin is their endgame and I am really looking forward to it!

Even assuming that your observation on price stability is true (and it's not, because inflation is there and its real, it may just be that your local shop has not inflated yet), you should care about the overprinting of money supply, because if you are not getting any piece of the pie, somebody is eating your pie.

if you are not getting any piece of the pie, somebody is eating your pie.

Economy is not a zero-sum game; the number of pies is not a constant -- pies are constantly created and destroyed. In a shitty economy, fewer pies are baked and eaten, per person, than in a healthy economy (so everybody eats better). Basic stuff.

Oh please. Such bullshit. The prices of everything has sky rocketed. Housing, medical care, education, gas... even cereal, candy bars, etc etc (look at how small they’ve become and how much less you get).

Your entire premise is bullshit. Only cheap because it’s made on some shit slave assembly line in Asia of South America where people get paid bread crumbs.

Prices everywhere have increased and people’s savings are being drained while taxes are also going up. Complete slavery and wealth drain on the masses resulting in destruction of the middle class. Go back to sucking your banker’s cock, dumb cunt.

You're missing all the points. The point is not "Bitcoin is better than the dollar now", the point is "the dollar is controlled by corrupt system, we can build a better currency, bitcoin can be a better currency than the dollar in the future".

So talking about how Bitcoin has higher volatility now is completely besides the point and makes you look like you aren't part of the conversation but just doing word association on this thread. A bot could do what you're doing. What a contribution to the dialog...

Salaries, along with other prices, have gone up to match. Many people have a home with a mortgage. They are net short dollars.

Dollars are a price. People buy real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, etc. A dollar pays no interest, it is used to execute financial transactions. There is no "slavery" in the US. You work, you get paid in dollars, then you buy other things with those dollars. You don't "buy dollars" or "invest in dollars". If your salary sucks, get skilled in something people are willing to pay you for.

I was merely countering u/brokendrive's claim that middle class income has been going up enough to keep pace with inflation, which it has not.

And thus it follows that holding high quality, fixed supply crypto projects (if bought at the right time, trough of a bear rather than peak of a parabolic run), has been and probably will continue to be a hedge against inflation.

It's the same with any tradable asset in existence. No, nobody can time it exactly, but just look at the log chart, its pretty clear that you sell after a parabolic run and buy the bear market afterwards.

If your thesis is that 20K was peak BTC ever, then great, don't buy it- thats the wonderful thing about markets, you make your bets, I make mine.

I know people who made literally 1000x gains in 12 months on some of those alts you are talking about, during the last bull run, and now they are looking for which projects to buy into for the next run up, whenever it comes.

If you sold bad milk to someone in the USA as a licensed vendor, your store/factory/farm would be shut the fuck down instantly by various FEDERAL Agencies(that's where your FED withholding goes to, their salaries.) Personally, I don't believe the market should work with a dick load of regulators, lisencesors and permitors. You buy bad milk? Take the other guy's experience as a warning and don't buy from that vendor. But wait people, the guy who sold you milk, doesn't just milk a cow and get it processed at some local processor up the street. The rabbit hole for the Agricultural industry is a lot deeper than you think.

So, I'm a little retarded, but I'll try to get my point across. Mega farms, mega-factories, mega-stores and commodities stocks control everything agriculture related. The food you eat. AT CENTRALIZED LEVEL this industry pumps out shit food, en-masse. This industries participants also use our legislative system against us to kill off the competition from "The Little Guy on Main Street". So a regular Joe never, ever bothers to become apart of this industry because of extreme regulatory measures taken, that seem to only be able to be met by the mega entities previously mentioned.

Now use critical thinking, if everything down to production, resale laws, distribution produces a bad batch of milk, we have the problem en-masse. Spoiled milk, en-masse, spoiled chicken en-masse, etc. Replace the CENTRALIZED AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY with the CENTRALIZED BANKING INDUSTRY.

So Banks, who run everything monetary related; what do they do? Loan out a batch of bad loans over a course of time, EN-MASSE, knowing the MILK is spoiled and still keep selling it with no fucks given. Because at the end when you're all having explosive diarrhea and the milk stock commodities is crashing, while also being bought the fuck up at the cheap.

Add a media campaign on the internet/television to shit on the milk industry and then promote it a few years later to jack the price of stock commodities. Then their FAVORTIRE, cause they own all the cows, land for the cows, pigs, and CANNED NON-PERISHABLES and all the other shit (Literally and figuratively) INFLATION SETS IN AND RISES THE VALUE OF ALL THAT FUCKING MILK!! Do you own a farm, do you own a cow, do you own any of that? Even if you did, you'd be taxed into oblivion and would be better off being a taxed incomewage slave.

This is every single fucking market in America, you can template this concept onto the entertainment industry, the business start-up industry, the housing industry. Everything you do in AMERICA and the WEST is REGULATED AND RULED UPON BEFORE THE ACT IS EVEN TAKEN. Because, if it weren't I'd be selling fucking cheeseburgers and fries off of a LIFETIME table in front of ONE of McPoonadl's store and putting that one store out of business, because I get my cow meat from a LOCAL farmer that is allowed PROCESS MEAT, FOR BURGERS. Oh, lets not forget all the other modern-digital-industrial contraptions we have nowadays too! The possibilities are endless. However, they are endless when stupid people like you open their mouths.

People's wealth are not in dollars. Look at ANYONE. How many dollars do they have. Almost none. I own real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities. None of those are dollars. The dollars I have are the few paper bills in my wallet. My money market accounts aren't dollars, either. They are priced in dollars. Dollars pay NO INTEREST. They are used to execute financial transactions.

Look at the richest people in the world. Bezos, Buffett, etc. How many dollars do they have? None. They have stock, bonds (including Treasuries), etc. None of those are dollars. They are priced in dollars. Bitcoin is priced in dollars. Is bitcoin dollars? No.

When the Fed creates money and lends it to banks, the interest those banks "earn" from their loans and investments is money they never should have had. It's money stolen from the people. The Fed only takes a small fraction of that interest, most is kept by private banks. So when you see that the fed "earns" almost $100 billion/year, the banks are making $trillions on top of that. The value that money holds is coming from somewhere. Where do you think its coming from? Who do you think they're stealing that value from, primarily, if not you and me and everybody?

And let's say, for instance, that the government only stole from farmers. Would that mean that us non-farmers are A-OK? Not at all, because, while it would certainly be worse for farmers, it would be bad for everyone because we would all have to pay more for food - proportionally more depending on what percentage of farmer's money is stolen. So even IF you're correct that inflation doesn't directly decrease your current wealth, it definitely negatively affects your future wealth.

Don't be complacent. The Fed is bad for everyone except the Fed and their cronies.

Lol you don't understand why wealth drain happens. Flipping burgers is no more valuable than it was 10 years ago. Making a phone now has become more valuable. Relatively, the people making the phones have seen increases in proportion to this. Burger flippers have not. It's not a drain its a lack of growth

A lack of growth is the drain dumbass. Technology hasn't slowed down, our economy should be growing. Its only not growing because corrupt politicians are stealing more than ever from every channel they can get their hands on. Get your head out of your ass please.

Your arguments are piss poor. You're an asshole and somehow surprised when people aren't receptive to you being a piece of shit with nothing to offer. You might wanna take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself why you enjoy being a god damn ass clown.

LOL. Your brilliant argument is that I'm a dick? Well done buddy. Half of you on here are just begging others to buy more / hodl so your own bags retain value.my comment about the tie is literally at least as accurate as OPs post. Get your head out your delusional ass

Yield curve inverting = short rates higher than long rates=recession ahead=asset prices and markets fall= banking system can't operate because they borrow short and lend long ie. negative profits=systemic restructuring(insolvencies) as short term borrowing and long term liabilities become more expensive=dollar value goes up(temporarily).

This is a disaster, especially after years of QE magnifying the effects.

When short term rates are higher than long term rates, otherwise called an "inverted yield curve", banks cannot operate. They go bust. The banks borrow short term and lend long term and with an inverted yield curve that leads to losses. Banks need a "normal" yield curve, when long term rates are higher than short term rates.

did I somehow end up on /r/btc? Signal over noise. Try agreeing on something and move on from there. Share your assumptions. Don't forget that some folks are reading and actually trying to educate themselves.

You can't read. I dont agree with a word he said, mainly because he said nothing. A list of my analysis , again fwiw:

Yield curve inverting = short rates higher than long rates=recession ahead=asset prices and markets fall= banking system can't operate because they borrow short and lend long ie. negative profits=systemic restructuring(insolvencies) as short term borrowing and long term liabilities become more expensive=dollar value goes up(temporarily).

This is a disaster, especially after years of QE magnifying the effects.

BTC'ers are making the same arguments as 'Gold Bugs'. The simple fact is (relative to a few years ago) fiat...especially the USD is becoming more valuable since the Fed has moved to quantitative restriction lowering it's balance sheet and increased short-term interest rates.

The KEY advantage (from an investment point of view) for fiat is that the government issuing the fiat can pay interest whereas coins (like gold) don't. Paying an interest rate equal or above the rate of inflation makes fiat the place to be, which is the case today...but wasn't a couple of years ago when coins exploded.

Surely you aren't serious. How much bitcoin do you think was created today? How many dollars? You're absolutely insane if you think the value of Bitcoin created today was higher than the dollars. I have to assume you're talking percentage, but even then, over the last 30 years, price inflation (how much less a dollar can buy) has been an average of about 3%. And the monetary inflation (what percentage of money is newly created) is certainly higher than that (since as technology improves, costs decrease for any given item). Bitcoin will be below 2% per year after the next halving, which is lower than the dollar on average.

Approximately $7 million in new bitcoin will be created today by mining reward fees. This is an annual inflation rate of 3.85%. United States inflation is currently around 2.5%.

Bitcoin's transaction fees will skyrocket after the mining reward drops. As it nears zero, Bitcoin will be modified to put in a fixed mining reward (one line change in the code), giving it permanent inflation and unlimiting the number of bitcoins. The system will simply not work otherwise because the transaction fees will be too high.

Given that you seem to have not read any of my comment. I'm not going to bother responding to yours. Except to say that your flagrant unsupported conjectures around permanent inflation and "will simply not work" are completely unconvincing. Links or it didn't happen buddy.

No, there's not going to be an increase in the mining reward after the halving(s). That's the deal. It's quite generous. The current mining rewards are pretty good.

A cornerstone of bitcoin's value is that these things aren't going to change. If they did change, that'd be a fork, and it would go off somewhere and struggle (probably it would be vigorously shilled, then pump and dumped, then fork again).

If $1 =$1 always you would never need a laundromat or a mixer if we're talking Bitcoin. Use something fungible and untraceable. The fact that people don't care about this is proof that most hoard these assets instead of spending because when you spend you care about taint.

The Fed has been doing quantitative tightening all year. So, the answer is minus 30 billion a month right now (they are pulling 30 billion in cash out of circulation). If you want to understand how it works:

Yes but don’t forget with futures trading you have basically increased your supply of btc AND there’s no risk. Meaning I can go 100x short for $4,000 = $400000 worth of bitcoin and NEVER have to own 1 single btc.

I STRONGLY disagree. In fact, I am betting on the fact that you are wrong. No Hard feelings, we are all entitled to our opinions, but yes, eventually 20k will be seen and surpassed, just a matter of when, not if.

However there’s no denying the fact that btc main selling point was a finite supply but in the chase for profits that will be gone. It’s well known that futures and etfs have suppressed the price of gold for a decade. And those can even be settled in physical. Just imagine what paper btc will do when it floods the market.

Interesting comment. While I disagree with you that 20k a coin will not be seen any longer, on the pure mathematical basis that something finite multiplied by something infinite gives infinite, I do agree with you that the money supply of bitcoin gets diluted. But it has been diluted for years now, and the dilution is called altcoins. The thing is: if fiat dilutes faster than bitcoin/crypto and their attached etfs eventually we'll see 20k again.

Of course it can be changed. It is literally a one line change to the source code. Miners would be happy with a change to the block reward to fix it at the current number. Users would be happy with the low transaction fees. Everyone is happy. It is what will happen anyway, it is in everyone's interest to unlimit the number of bitcoins.

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